Outcome

Context

I have quite a number of "friends" on Facebook who are actually high school "acquaintances" at best. These are people I've never talked to these people on Facebook and rarely interacted with in person. Especially after graduating from high school, I know nothing about their current lives. Why are we friends on Facebook? Good question.

Intention

My question is about the reactions I receive when I change my profile picture to that of an old high school acquaintance who I didn't really know but am friends with on Facebook. The intention is to confuse people, particularly my high school classmates. By choosing someone I was not very close friends with, I am curious to see how my high school classmates will respond, whether they post positive, negative or confused comments on the picture, like it, or PM me. I also want to see how my college friends react to the picture to see if they are confused or just don't care very much. I chose this method to confuse people because my previous profile pictures have been of my art, and my current picture is one of myself, so I felt that having a similar picture would not create too much of an effect. What other choice do I have but to use someone else's picture to create a bigger effect?

Process

The first step was choosing the picture. There were actually two pictures that I was stuck between:

and

I knew both of these people in high school, but we were not friends. I did have classes with both of them, but rarely interacted with them. I ultimately went with the first one because I thought it would create more of an effect due to its more provocative nature. I also made sure to ask for permission, but at the same time I did not want to reveal the project to him completely, so I just asked if I could use his picture. He responded, "Go ahead, it's public." I also happened to have a club interview over the weekend, and thus became slightly reluctant to change my picture, but I decided that if anything went weird, I could just explain that my profile picture was for a class.

Product

Upon receiving confirmation, from my phone, I opened his profile picture on Facebook, took a screen shot, and cropped out everything not a part of the photo. I didn't edit the actual picture in any way. I then changed my profile picture on Saturday morning and kept it until Sunday morning. I didn't make an effort to spread the picture; I simply engaged in the usual activities I usually do (sending messages/pokes to people, occasionally liking posts).

Effect

Overall, the picture got 18 likes. Of these likes, 2 of them were people from high school who I did not know well (they did know the guy), 3 were friends from high school, 9 were friends I met during college, and 4 were people from the class. The guy who owned the original photo did not show any reaction to his photo. The original picture had 9 likes. None of the people who liked the original picture liked mine. Comment-wise, I received 7 comments that were a mixture of "O_o you look different," "Wow rachel so handsome <3 <3," "been working out I see," and "Whut." No one I didn't know very well during high school commented. This is pretty much what I expected. I received one message saying I was trolling around with that picture and another asking "wtf wut classes are you even taking >>?" All of my closest friends during high school reacted (not necessarily liked the picture), while a few people I met during college reacted.

Reflection

I learned that people I met in college generally thought I was trolling around because the high school context was lost. The people I did know in high school were in turn unaware that many people from CMU were changing their profile pictures/posting weird things, so they were more confused. I did feel slightly bad for the person I took the picture from because I did get more likes/reaction than him, so if I did it again, I wouldn't use someone else's exact profile picture. I would instead do some editing to the picture to change it (hopefully without making look insulting to the person), and get proper permission (they should approve of the fact that I'm changing my picture to his/her picture and approve of the editing).